On the Edge

I don’t remember a mortgage being quite like this; ever. If you’ve been reading along, you will know I’ve been doing some head banging. Ok, well, not really. I haven’t just been doing some head banging- I’ve been doing A LOT of head banging. So much so, that I’m pretty sure I have a sizable dent in my forehead.

The requirement changing that I referenced in one of my last posts was just one of the bumps in the road. You may {or may not} be aware of the factors that are taken into consideration for mortgage approval.

One of the things they most look at is what’s called “debt-to-income ratio.” In a nutshell, they want to make sure you aren’t overextended and can actually PAY for the mortgage.

You may think this sounds like common sense, and really, it is. You may be surprised, though, at the number of people who go into mortgages not having a clue what they can really afford- which is NOT the same as what they can qualify for- and then {in the past, before the new regulations} would totally over-extend themselves.

Before the housing bust and collapse, a certain amount of “high risk” mortgages were mandatory. I’m pretty sure that’s come back to bite them in the butt.

SO many people were upside down in their mortgages, and couldn’t sell because the property was now over –valued and wouldn’t appraise. Then, many of those same people had either balloon payments coming due or had an ARM {adjustable rate mortgage} mortgage and had been paying basically the interest on the mortgage with the lock-in-rate coming due.

Many people had planned on having a low payment {or one they could afford} for 5 years then using the equity in the house to refinance at the end of the term, which would allow them to not pay PMI (mortgage insurance). Some people planned on selling the house {with all that extra equity} before their mortgage was set to get locked in; using the profit as their next down payment, and getting a regular monthly payment they could afford.

But the market tanked; home values went in reverse, and a lot of people wound up in houses with regular long-term locked-in monthly mortgage payments they couldn’t afford. When that happened, houses were foreclosed if the bank wouldn’t accept a short-sale, or they couldn’t get the house sold despite listing as a short-sale and still ended up in foreclosure and losing their homes.

Now what we’re seeing are regulations that are super, super stringent. I have heard horror stories of people who were self-employed with histories of consistent income with enough in reserves and other accounts in addition to funds for down payment and closing costs that couldn’t qualify because they couldn’t “prove” where their income for the last 5 years came from because they didn’t hang on to hard copies every single incoming penny.

I have heard all kinds of stories about people who have had closing dates and then couldn’t close for some odd-ball reason; I’ve heard about people who actually did close but then the bank didn’t transfer the funds to them which then delayed their move-in date.

It’s just been strange.

The point here being that all kinds of things are unusual trying to get mortgages these days, and it’s my opinion that it’s particularly so when you don’t have your other house sold. 😀

To keep our debt-to-income ratio where we wanted it to be for the two houses, we went ahead and got rid of a monthly payment. For the last few years, I’ve been paying this account electronically {as I do all my bills} and it *always* clears and is credited to my account in 2 days. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Except this time. Nope, this time- you know, the ONE time I NEEDED to have it paid on time- they completely lost the money.

Yep. They sure did.

And it wasn’t just a regular-monthly-payment amount of money. *sigh*

A week after it still hadn’t posted to my account, I started getting mad. My bank showed it had been paid and cleared my account. But the receiver of the money had no record of it.

That resulted in considerable phone calls back and forth with my bank so they could trace the money; and also numerous calls back and forth to the other place.

Then there were faxes. Paperwork needed to be sent to them with requests to different departments on the receiving end; all of which had to be signed. They needed “proof” from my bank that showed they had received the money. Because I don’t have fax capability, that meant that Hunny had to take time out of his massively busy schedule to do it. Blarg.

This one little piece of the puzzle was going to screw up everything else! And by that, I do mean everything.

What hinges on an on-time closing? Let me tell you….. The day we close (Thursday), I have my floor guy coming in to begin refinishing the floors. That won’t allow for carpet to get in until the following Thursday. That’s arranged, too.

The carpet takes two days (Thursday and Friday) and the semi with my furniture comes Saturday.

Because my house is getting loaded {and has some remaining packing} and delivered here, that means someone has to be there to let them in and supervise. That means 2 plane tickets back- flying there on Saturday and then flying home here on Wednesday. Oh- and a car rental.

Do you see all the moving parts to this? 😆

It’s what I call the “domino effect.” Have you ever tried to stop falling dominoes? What happens? Things get knocked all caddywhompus and it’s near impossible to straighten them out.

If I don’t close on time, I can’t get my floors done on time. If the floors don’t get done as planned, that pushes carpet back. If carpet gets pushed back, my stuff will have to sit on a truck, if they let us.

Why else am I so concerned about my timeline? Well, gosh, if you haven’t heard- there was a hurricane. While it didn’t hit us directly {although the Outer Banks got hit pretty hard} because we’re about an hour and a half inland, that means that availability of supplies could be an issue if we are delayed.

And then that might mean another few days in the campground, because our month will be up. Those extra days are paid at a significantly higher price. We’ve talked about moving the trailer to the house and plugging in there, even though we can’t get in because the floors can’t be walked on, but the sticking point is laundry.

We’re doing numerous loads during the week. It’s nice doing them here because we can get them started and just check back, instead of having to literally sit there all day.

We found the local laundromat- they call them “wash houses” here. Not only do most of the machines not work, but they don’t have any hot water. So, laundry is an actual concern. Hunny wants me to get an rv washer/dryer combo, because we have two sets of hookups in the house {even though the bottom floor hookups are in a spot where the floors are being redone} and we may go that route, although I’m not sure how that will work when during the week they are redoing the floors.

In the midst of all of this, I have the cleaning that I can get to, and getting ready to paint. The plan is to get most of it in one fell swoop so we don’t have to make repeated trips 25 miles away, one way. Lots and lots of organizing; lots and lots of trips for supplies need to be orchestrated; working around contractors.

Next week, I need to get all my utilities started. I very much feel like this is the calm before the storm. I’ll be relieved when the whirlwind is over, but this definitely falls into the ‘the only to get to the end is to go through it’ category.

Tomorrow, we blessedly get to do something “normal,” as we’re going on a homeschool field trip to a farm. They’re giving a tour of- you guessed it– a chicken coop. 😆 I am seriously hoping my kids won’t hijack the instructor. 😆

It’s the last little relaxed day of fun before things seriously get wound up. Hang on to your hats!

8 Responses

Good luck, Tik! Crossing my fingers for you!!! I have a good friend going through the same things right now — closing has been postponed TWICE already and he’s freaking out. I hope you get through it all with your sanity! 🙂

Oh my word, and then yesterday I learned that a fax request still hasn’t been honored, so that means another call from me this morning, and really, every day over the weekend {I think they have someone there those days}.

There’s someone that I know, too, whose closing was delayed by the hurricane because now they need to go back and do another inspection, and she’s not happy, either.

It’s just unreal; this process these days. I’ll really be happy when this part of it is settled, so then all I have to panic over is getting the other house sold…… 😀

Oh, Sandy paid a visit, alright; she just didn’t do much damage here. We got some rain and some wind, and there were people here trying not to freak out over the wind- of course, coming from Roswell with *actual* wind, I was like, “this is nothing to be concerned with.”

We were hunkered down, and didn’t take the dogs out but for short spurts, so except for satellite tv outages {and the normal awful satellite internet outages}, we didn’t have much to worry about except to just wait it out. The kids got out the bunkhouse table and played games, etc.

Maybe I am naive, but it was not severe enough for me to really get worried about. Wind doesn’t faze me, and there wasn’t enough torrential rain for me to really get worried. We’re about an hour and a half from the coast, and the direction of this one wasn’t a huge concern for flooding. Apparently, a hurricane needs to come from another direction to give us the heavy flooding here………ask me the after the next one. 😉

Oh jeez, I can’t even imagine. We still have at least 15 months before anything happens around here, and I am already stressing. I’m actually not worried about the mortgage at all. I guess we were fortunate in that we got a ridiculously low-interest fixed rate to begin with, and a few years later, in the midst of the housing market crumbling around us, we actually qualified to refinance at an even lower interest rate. And fortunately, when he retires, although we will be losing his active duty income, his pension and his VA disability will almost completely make up for it. So, yeah, not worried about the mortgage. I’m just really not looking forward to all the other crap. And the fact that we are packing up and moving to the beach because we just want to, no real job prospects, not even really looking for them, not even really worried about it, we’re just packing our crap and leaving LOL. Having 2 mortgages just ain’t gonna happen, the idea of renting out this house makes me sweat, and the idea of renting a house in the new city makes me sweat. Soooo…. yeah, we’re trying to figure out how to do that delicate dance of selling one house and buying another all at the same time. Stress!

I wasn’t worried about the mortgage-I knew that I had gotten everything along that we needed. We never anticipated having two mortgages, either, but it was a combination of things (like that ridiculously low interest rate) combined with the moving market here + the house + the price that convinced us to go this route.

And really-it’s all the underwriter being ridiculous- they even requested that my home owner’s insurance co phrase a particular thing a certain way only to have my agent tell them that legally, the insurance binder has to be as is…. it’s really like the underwriter is clueless and has never done this before. Sheesh.

If we were back in NM, and in your shoes, I’d get the house on the market a year before we wanted to retire, unless we didn’t care if we moved right away…….

I actually just sold my first home this year, and the couple that bought it had no debt, but no savings either. The bank actually lent them 125% without a problem. I was really in disbelief and I had tried not to get my hopes up at how easy the sale was seeming (they offered above the asking price within a week of it going on the market) but lo and behold, it went through. The estate agent told me that if the banks started turning solid young couples like this down with low-paying but stable long term jobs, they’d lose 70% of their customers. Still, banks are still gambling it seems!